Google and Cisco have teamed up on a hybrid cloud partnership in something of a first for the networking giant.

The partnership will enable Cisco’s customers to deploy applications and services across both on-premises environments and Google Cloud Platform.

Alongside this, the increasing importance of open source was cited in the joint offering, with developers being able to leverage managed Kubernetes, as well as Istio, to secure, manage and monitor microservices.

Writing in a blog post, Kip Compton, vice president of Cisco’s cloud platform and solutions group, outlined the reasons behind the move. “One of the things that makes hybrid hard is that while cloud generally abstracts underlying hardware and resources, these abstractions are different in various clouds,” he wrote. “It’s actually a good thing – enabling the rapid innovation and expansion of cloud platform capabilities that we’ve seen over the last several years – but those differences can become a real hindrance for enterprises implementing hybrid cloud.

“It’s with these challenges in mind that engineering teams from Cisco and Google Cloud started working together on a new solution,” Compton added. “The result is a solution that will deliver cloud agility and scale, coupled with enterprise-class security and support.”

Nan Boden, head of global technology partners at Google Cloud, wrote similarly. “This partnership to enhance existing on-premises infrastructure and extend it to the cloud addresses tough operational problems that enterprises have traditionally struggled to solve,” Boden wrote. “It also takes advantage of Cisco’s best of breed capabilities, including the ability to extend Cisco’s network and security policies and configurations and monitor application behaviour across hybrid cloud environments.”

Google’s cloud push under Diane Greene – who said earlier this year the company was able to catch up to Amazon Web Services (AWS) within five years – has been concerted. In July, CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts amidst the company’s ‘impressive’ cloud assets, the number of its big cloud deals – worth more than $500,000 – had tripled year over year. Among its most recent customer wins was marketing automation software provider Marketo, who went all-in on Google’s cloud in August as part of a wider six year alliance.

The companies said the solution will be available to a ‘limited number’ of customers during the first part of 2018, with general availability being rolled out later in the year.